U.S. has revoked citizenship of resident of Des Moines over wartime past

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WASHINGTON — A former Nazi concentration camp guard lost a Supreme Court appeal on Monday over the government’s decision to revoke his U.S. citizenship.

Justices declined to review the case of John Hansl, a member of the SS Death’s Head battalion that guarded concentration camps at Sachsenhausen near Berlin in 1943 and Natzweiler in France in 1944.

Hansl, who lives in Des Moines, Iowa, sought to distinguish his case from other former Nazi camp guards by arguing he did not hide his wartime past when he asked for a visa to enter the United States in the mid-1950s or personally assist in persecution.

An appeals court, however, agreed with a lower court ruling that Hansl’s work as an armed guard with orders to shoot escaping prisoners was sufficient evidence that he “personally assisted in persecution.”